*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by kulpims.

I guessed from the outset that this was one of those 'inventions' asking for 'investors' on one of those kickstarter type sites that allows the 'inventor' to keep the money even if the venture fails (or never gets started). If that's the case (I'm just guessing) then these WERE successful, as they got tons of investment but will never have a product.

BUT THEY'RE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

That video is bullshit aswell.. I cant stand the tone of thunderfoots presentation and he just bases all his data on assumption aswell...

Buying glass from the internet and complaining that it would be too expensive??? Using random numbers to prove a point? The entire video just assumes the means of transport will stay the same forever...trucks + rubber wheels = dust = wear and tear..

Just build the space elevator already pls!!!

What's really awesome is the irony this guy's explanation is as bullshit as theirs.

I love the explination that it can't work because eventually the hexagonal pads would create uneven roads due to the material below them eroding away, then goes on to explain that asphalt does a fantastic job of A) Creating a uniform surface to drive on, and B) it's durable.

...Why wouldn't we just put the Hexagons over the asphalt then?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'solar, roadways, reality, check, its laughable' to 'solar roadways, reality check, thunderf00t, are they real' - edited by xxovercastxx

Less snobbery and more information would have made for a better video.

Ok, so it'll cost 20 trillion dollars to replace all the roads in the country... How much would it cost to repave all those roads? I suspect that would also be more than the annual federal budget, yet all those roads still exist.

Apparently it takes a shitload of energy to melt ice, but how much energy does it take to prevent ice from forming?

Skepticism is absolutely the correct position here until we begin to see functional systems in real-world situations but, if you're going to spend the last 3 minutes of your critique video puffing on about how you're doing the real investigative journalism that we all need, then maybe you should perform a proper investigation and reveal your facts and findings like an intelligent adult.

I stopped listening to thunderfoot long ago as i cant stand his tone of voice. It so rubs me the wrong way.

I do have to agree with the LEDs not being seen during the day, but there is a tech that creates reflections in colour. Sorta like a bad-ass Amazon Kindle. That would work for the Solar Freakin Roadway. They wouldn't need LEDs at all then, even at night. Headlights would produce the light needed. Those bumps would become pixels.

Why glass anyway, how about transparent aluminium?

I do like his idea of covered roadways though, with the solar cells on the roof. Probably end up being the same cost per mile as solar freakin' roadways.

Assume A=1m^2 of t=5cm thick glass, thermal conductivity k=1W/(m*K), glass to be kept at a constant 5°C with an average ambient temperature (averaged over the whole winter season day and night) of 0°C => temperature difference DT=5°C (also no salt to help, original promo video claimed that as an advantage of these things), you'll need roughly

A*k*DT/t = 100W of constant power (day and night for the entire winter!) to keep the tiles at 5C (i.e. 100W/m^2 of tile).

There's NO WAY you'll produce that much power per square meter on average (day and night!) in the northern winter (!), meaning the tiles would soon be covered by that thin hard layer of compacted snow that you get, rendering them basically worthless in the winter.

There's also a negative feedback mechanism: if you don't produce enough power to melt all the snow or ice, some of the area gets blocked, which reduces power output even further.

Where I lived, in northern MI, these tiles would be useless for about 9 months of the year

I keep thinking someone is posting a followup to this video but then when I click the video its the same one that has been floating the nets since the original on May 18, 2014.

You guys just suck at rewriting headlines.

Even as a professional skeptic and cynicist, I have to say this Thunderfoot guy is an asshole.

Hard to be floating around when it was uploaded on the 31st. also, even tho it starts out with the same intro, this one is actually 30 mins long instead of the original 8.

Ahh your right, its a new video, they just copied the intro as a method of introduction, a bad one as you can see as I am sure I am not the only one who hit play and said "seen it".

Unfortunately going back to dates again, an armchair hosted youtube commentary with at maximum 12 days of research. One of the first things he does is question the traction properties. With no.. scientific data what so ever to backup his side, continuous calling them glass bricks.

When the snow falls it is already frozen - snow is just small particles of ice - and it requires just as much energy to melt the water as incoming falling snow as already formed ice. And then you have to get rid of all the water from melted snow and ice. Guess could heat the sides of the road as well - deep into the ground.


What _would_ make more sense than Solar Freakin' Roadways could for example be Solar Freakin' Rooftops - on a grand scale.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Solar-FREAKIN-Roadways

Solar FREAKIN' Roadways! has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash.

How about lots of little fans, to make the road like a frost-free fridge?

Obligatory XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/1378/